Wizard

A wizard is a bash script that walks a human, stage by stage, through a manual procedure that is tedious to do by hand and tedious to re-explain to an agent every time. It opens each URL, says exactly what to click and copy, captures the values, writes them where they belong (.env, GitHub secrets), confirms at every stage, and shows how many stages remain. It might configure third-party services, run a one-off migration, or move the project from one state to another.

The UX is already solved by template.sh: stage-by-stage progress, confirmation gates, cross-platform URL opening (including WSL), hidden secret entry, idempotent, atomic .env upserts (quoted so dotenv readers and source read back the exact value, the file kept owner-only, a line it cannot read back left as is), gh secret / gh variable writes, and a closing summary. Your job is only to scope the procedure and author its stages. The library above the STAGES marker is identical in every wizard; that consistency is the point: never hand-edit it.

A wizard is ephemeral by default: built for one run, saved under .scratch/ or scripts/, deleted when the job is done. Commit it only when the user wants a repeatable setup path that lives in the repo.

Process

1. Scope the procedure

Work out every manual step the human must take and every value captured along the way. Read the repo first, don't ask cold:

• For setup: .env, .env.example, .env.*, README, docker-compose*, framework config (in Laravel, every env('X') call under config/ is a value the wizard may need to produce), and .github/workflows/* (every secrets.* / vars.* reference is a value the wizard must produce).
• For a migration or transition: the current state, the target state, and the irreversible actions between them.

For each non-secret value, also look for what you already know or can derive: the repo name from git remote, the app name or URL from config, a region or project ID from infra files, a non-placeholder value in .env.example, a value the user said earlier in the conversation, or a conventional default (us-east-1, main). That becomes the value's default, so the human confirms it with Enter instead of retyping it.

Then show the user the ordered list of stages and the values each produces, with any defaults, and confirm: they may add, drop, or reorder.

Done when: every stage is named in order, and for each captured value you know (a) where the human gets it, (b) where it is written (.env, a GitHub secret, both, or nowhere; some stages are pure actions), (c) whether it is secret (hidden entry) or public, and (d) its default, if you know or can derive one.

2. Map each stage's journey

For each stage, write the precise path a human follows: which URL to open, what to do there, where a value is shown, which variable it fills: e.g. "Dashboard → Developers → API keys → Reveal test key → copy". Where you do not know the current UI or the exact command, say so and ask the user or check the docs (the research skill, where available). A step you are not sure exists is a question, not a stage.

Done when: every stage traces to concrete instructions a stranger could follow.

3. Author the wizard

Copy template.sh to the target path. Replace the example stage with one stage per step, in dependency order. Use the library helpers: stage, say/step, open_url, ask/ask_secret, write_env, set_secret/set_var, pause/confirm. Set TOTAL_STAGES to the number of stages you wrote. Keep every stage inside run_wizard and leave the file's last line as is, so bash parses the whole script before the first prompt.

Hold the bar the template sets: pass every known default as ask's third argument (ask APP_URL "App URL:" "https://staging.example.com"), open the URL before asking for its value, ask_secret for anything secret, write_env every persisted value, set_secret only the values CI actually needs, and confirm before any irreversible action. Never put a secret in the script as a default: ask_secret takes none, and re-runs already offer the saved .env value. Each stage clears the screen so only the current step is visible: keep a stage to one focused task so nothing the human needs scrolls away. The library above the marker stays untouched.

Done when: every value from step 1 has an ask (carrying its default, where step 1 found one), a write_env, and (where CI needs it) a set_secret whose name exactly matches a secrets.* reference in a workflow.

4. Verify and hand off

• bash -n <script>; run shellcheck if available.
• chmod +x <script>.
• Trace it statically rather than running it: it opens browsers and blocks on human input. Check the step 3 criterion line by line.
• Tell the user how to run it. If it is a repeatable setup path, commit it and link it from the README so the next person runs the script instead of asking an agent.

Done when: the script parses, is executable, and the user has the one command that starts it.